Recruiting Assigned Areas

2/26 (5 hours)

We decided to incorporate film into each meeting

As mentioned in a previous blog post, each coach is assigned to certain areas of Ohio and the surrounding states. Today, we looked at Coach Woodson’s specific area and high schools to which he was assigned. I’m from Canton, OH and I was amazed by the number of high schools we have in a single city. Looking over these high schools with Coach Woodson, there are so many high schools within his assigned area. It was quite overwhelming. Though there is a great amount of organization within the spreadsheet, it was still overwhelming. I had to look through the many schools with many different prospective students, the notes, emails, and X accounts. By the time we looked over a couple of athletes’ films and their information throughout the spreadsheet, hours had passed without notice.

After Coach Woodson went through those athletes, he gave me control over his screen. With some guidance, I was able to look through his assigned area based on the athlete he requested me to look up. I opened their film through Hudl and if they possibly uploaded to X and pointed out formations, pros and cons, how they related to their notes in the film, and demeanor. I explained to Coach Woodson LSU’s coach Kim Mulkey said something that has always stood out to me. She mentioned in an interview that she doesn’t care how good of an athlete the girl she is recruiting. She cares about how they react to being down at 4th quarter. How is that athlete going to pick up their team? How does that athlete react by throwing a temper tantrum versus keeping their head in the game and doing the best they can? I believe that is very important no matter the sport. I understand that tensions are high in competition considering I was a hot-headed athlete. When I take on the role of becoming a recruiter, I believe this is very important to me. I don’t want an athlete part of my team who will be seen as a “problem” or has an “attitude problem”. Coach Woodson notes that often, he does look at the reactions of the athletes that he recruits. He talks about where they have overlooked many athletes they were going to begin to pursue based on their temper, aggression, etc., while in the game.

During this meeting we looked over random film on YouTube, and he had me point out formations of offense and defense. He decided that this would be great learning tactic, and we planned to do this for each meeting at the end to stay up on film dissection.